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Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers.
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Welcome to a new episode of the Story of My Pet Podcast.
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I am very happy to welcome my guest, Amy King.
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Amy, thank you so much for being here.
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Thanks for having me.
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Recently we bonded over our shared love of our pets.
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Amy, before we get into all the things, like I always say, I like to start off with: have you always been an animal lover and did you have pets growing up?
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And yes, I've always been an animal lover.
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I didn't get pets until I was 10 or something like that.
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We wore my mom down and finally she let us get fish.
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Because my dad was allergic to cats, and I'm allergic to dogs, even though I have dogs.
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But I just grew up with really bad eczema, and she was just very weird about that.
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You know what I mean?
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So we had a tank of goldfish, and we had a tank of tropical, and that was really very interesting because we got to see our black mollies give birth a couple of times, and our scissor fish.
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It was very fascinating.
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Yeah, it was really cool.
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You know, I was just talking to a potential guest for this podcast, and she has a dog daycare and does behavioral things, and we were venting about what people do and don't do with their pets.
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And one of the things I said is what I've learned through all of this is a lot of what my experience has been, I think I sometimes assume other people have had it too, right?
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So I think with animals, sometimes we realize, oh, well, if you hadn't had a pet like this before, you don't know how they behave or how they should and all of that.
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So I love that you're talking about these fish and that the experience you guys got to have was seeing births and seeing them grow up.
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So it sounds like you wore your mom down and got to, you know, experience some fun things as a kid because of your fish.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It wasn't a puppy or a kitty, but still it was it was in its own way because then it became like a family thing because we would go to the fish store and we would learn about all the different fish, and it did turn into this giant project.
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Once you get one, it turns into the whole thing.
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I know.
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I think my mom was sorry.
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Yeah, then in on that.
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But yeah, we had tanks for quite a few years, and and then she said no more.
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So that was the end of it.
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So then at what point did you decide to get a dog or to get your first pet?
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Oh, now that's an interesting story.
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So I my husband and I were dating, and he got a job down in Arizona.
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It was training, and it was supposed to be a five-year gig.
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And so our first year, we moved down together, and our first year we lived in an apartment.
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And when we moved into our house, somebody I worked with kept telling me stories about this dog that she had gotten from her sister.
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And this dog, she presented as Belgian Malinois, but she had like a little bit of keda, it looked like in her.
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She was a small, 45-pound dog, terrified, terrified.
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She had been to four homes by the time she was a year old, and we were the fourth.
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And that doesn't help with their anxiety being moved around that much.
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No, no.
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And I think that was harder for this dog is that the sister had adopted it from the pound and thought that it would make a great dog for her husband, who was a police officer at the time.
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So he trained that dog because he worked canine and he worked undercover.
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He trained this dog in very strict police ways.
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And because she had been abused, it didn't work out so well.
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I ended up with a dog because the dog was going to go to the pound.
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And I was like, wait a minute, don't you take the dog?
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I kind of had fallen in love with this dog.
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And for a first-time dog owner, that was just not really the dog I should have been bringing home.
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But fortunately, my husband had grown up with golden retrievers.
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So I convinced him to go look at this dog.
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Come on, please go look at this dog.
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She's gonna go back to the pound.
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Sad story, tears.
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We go out.
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The next thing you know, we're driving home with this dog.
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And so that that's our first dog.
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And she was terrified of everything.
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And she warmed up to us, but she was super super afraid.
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She left my husband, but she was super afraid of any other man.
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And very specific kind of things, like if you wore tank tops, if you had a stick, it was, and if you were older, like she was she wouldn't go near a person that hit those kind of criteria.
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So that was our first dog.
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And we had a pair of rescues after her, and then another pair of rescues after them.
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And one just recently passed, but we still have one of the pair.
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Should the pair I love that story because I have met so many people who have adopted the first time and ended up with an animal of some type of behavior issue.
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Either they put in the work and it works out, and you do whatever you need for the animal, or they're like, oh, this is too much work.
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I can't do it.
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And that's a lot of what ends up in the shelter, right?
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Dogs and cats that need a little extra.
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Now, I want everyone to realize all animals need that.
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No animal is going to be brought into a brand new environment, new people, new animals, and be like, sure, let's have fun.
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You know, like we wouldn't do that as humans, right?
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So we can't expect animals to, but I applaud you and your husband putting in the work and allowing a dog who obviously has just general anxiety around things, be happy and live in a safe and positive environment because not all dogs get to have that safe place.
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Yeah, she was.
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Thank you.
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I loved her.
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She was just such a sweet, expressive dog, but she had a lot of issues.
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She was a door dasher.
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So we never broke her at that.
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The minute the door opened, I got very good with the arms and legs, the door.
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Yeah, I had a dog growing up that if the gardeners didn't lock the gate, she was off on a little adventure.
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Yeah, and it's terrifying.
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And then the last thing about this dog is that because she had been an outdoor dog before we got her, she was an indoor dog with us.
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In Arizona, you can get valley fever.
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I don't know if you get that in California.
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So it's like mold spores that grow in the dirt, and then it goes into your respiratory system.
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Well, because this dog was so dramatic, she was just a very dramatic dog.
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Took her into the vet for something else.
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And then the vet asked me some questions and what else is going on with her.
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I said, she's been limping, and I she's kind of a dramatic dog, but she was kind of holding her pod, looking at me.
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And I said, I don't know if this is her being dramatic.
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He goes, Let's just take x-rays and case and she had bowel fever, and it had gone into her, you know, yeah, and ended up having seizures because it went into her central nervous system.
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And so she was on a lot of medications, and that's what finally killed her was all the medications that she was on.
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And one day she just laid down and we and didn't get back up, and we had to take her in.
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But I think you have to be prepared for that, you know what I mean?
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And what's your game plan?
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And you know, right.
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Yeah, so much of what you said is important, you know, especially if it's someone's first pet or adding a pet, like you have to think about the time they need, the space, and how to introduce pets, all those things, plus the medical side, you know, you never know what could come up.
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And one of my childhood dogs, champ, he had seizures.
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When it first happened, we didn't know what was happening.
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And so he was on medication for his seizures for probably a decade of his life, right?
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Yeah.
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And so in the end, it was the medication caused other problems that ended up he had to be put to sleep.
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But you know, you never know, and that can look different for different animals.
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But the valley fever thing is really interesting because I never thought about the animals can get it.
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It actually is very prevalent where I live in Bakersfield in California.
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There's actually some of the doctors here that did some of the early research with it because there's so much of it in our soil.
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I'm third generation on my mom's side, born and raised here.
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So we've been here for a while.
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And so she grew up here and she had no idea that at some point when she was a child she had valley fever.
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She was sick at different times, but it was never diagnosed back in the 50s and 60s.
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But when she was an adult living in Santa Barbara, she had several incidents where she couldn't breathe and her lung had collapsed.
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And it was after the second or third time then they did tests, they realized she had all these scars from valley fever, and she actually had to have part of her lung taken out because it would just keep doing that if she hadn't.
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And so, you know, those are things like that.
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I never even thought that a pet could get it.
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So that was just a very interesting you bringing that up.
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I'm like, wow, I would have never even thought of that.
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So you mentioned you recently lost a dog, and so I don't know how much you want to talk about that, but I know that one of the things I have found in this podcast is talking about our pets, especially the ones we've lost.
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Sometimes it's, you know, healing to get to share them and talk about them.
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And it's also important for other pet parents to hear that it's okay if you're not okay.
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It's okay if you're struggling with an older pet or a pet that's sick, or you've lost a pet and you're not ready to get a new one.
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You know, those are important things for us to talk about and be like, it's okay.
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It's up to you what feels right to you.
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I'm sure it's a little different for you because you had a pair and you still have one, but we also have to think about the pet that's left behind.
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Sometimes it can really affect them.
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How has that whole transition period of losing a pet been for you?
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I think the loss of this pet was extra hard on me.
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And because, you know, our first dog was the extra medication, and then the next two dogs, one had had to have a splenectomy.
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It's never easy over here.
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So he had to have a splenectomy, and then after, because he had a slow bleed in his spleen.
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And I said to my husband, he looks depressed.
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You look at him, he looks depressed, he doesn't look quite right.
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And I he's like, He's a dog, he's not depressed.
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And I'm like, so I took him to the vet, and then they did some tests, and he had this little bleed in his spleen.
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So I guess two things I think being really observant and in tune with your dog can save your dog's life, right?
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Yeah.
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The other thing is, like you said, so then the buddy, the next one, had stomach cancer.
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So it was kind of these things that happened, and then we kind of knew that they had this limited time.
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With Flanders, he had LARPAR, so he had to have a laryngeal tie back so that he could breathe because he was starting to sound like Darth Vader.
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Yeah, and so but maybe the universe knows that you guys will really take care of them, even if it's something crazy.
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Because you know, I hear all the time animals get taken to shelters because they can't afford medical care and things like that.
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So somebody knows that you guys will go the extra mile for your dogs.
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My gosh, well, the family.
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I mean, you wouldn't let a family member suffer, but then also at some certain point, you've got to say, this is too much.
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We weren't sure how long he was gonna last, but you know what?
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Two years that gave him two extra, very good years, except for a few bouts of pneumonia because they can aspirate.
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So you have to be very careful about drinking and feeding.
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And so in the early post-surgery, I grieved multiple times because he'd lay on the floor and I thought he was going.
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I'm like, this is it, he's dying.
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And because he really did look like he was dying.
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And so it was a long kind of two years.
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I enjoyed every minute that we could with him, but then he started to slow down because he was 14 by the time you know we had to put him down.
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The trauma of we have a vet that we've been going to for over 20 years.
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Uh not the vet that owned the practice had sold it to like a corporate model, but you know, that the vet that we had there had been carried for all our pets.
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So they care, you know, she cared for Buddy and Trigger and Flanders and and then again.
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And I think the hardest part is when I we called to say we were having this problem and that because of their business model, they weren't going to take him in.
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They just said go to the emergency room.
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And that was heartbreaking for me because this dog really hated the emergency room.
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Because we'd been there for, you know what I mean?
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And so we kind of went the rounds of trying to find a place to, you know, take him that would be feel like the right place to take him.
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We ended up at another corporate model kind of emergency clinic that was way better than the other ones that we had been going to.
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And it was a very lovely, peaceful passing, and they were great.
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But I think that I just felt so let down by our long-term vet.
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And it wasn't hurt, you know what I mean?
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Right.
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You know, even when you try to get in, it's like a week out for and that is, you know, one of the big issues in the US.
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On top of the overpopulation crisis and how many animals we have with not enough homes, there aren't enough vets.
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There aren't enough vets that can take new clients.
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I've even read there aren't enough vets in school becoming vets.
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Like we don't even have enough in the pipeline.
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I've had people tell me here locally where I live that they've called around and can't even find a vet to take in a new patient.
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Like you said, with emergency vets, they're so overrun.
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They'll say, sure, come, but you're gonna have to wait in the parking lot for eight hours.
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The system doesn't make it easy for those of us who are trying to help.
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And so that kind of makes it even more difficult for new people to adopt, too, when they don't have good resources to support them and their pets.
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Yeah.
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I mean, gone are the days that you say, Oh my gosh, you know, my dog injured his foot and can't walk.
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And then they say, Okay, we can squeeze them in at this time.
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Can you come?
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You know what I mean?
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So because everything's so spaced out, they don't want anyone together.
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I think that's part of the difficulty, but then also for us emotionally is the roller coaster of not knowing, or is this the right time?
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What do they need?
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They can't tell us.
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And even when we're really in tune and we can tell something's wrong, we can't always figure out what it is, and that's so hard.
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And what I have learned is sometimes the anticipatory work grief going through the end or medical issues is almost harder than the loss because you're just you're up and down and unknown, and you feel like, isn't it?
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And you mentioned you would look at them lying there and think, Did he pass?
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We've had that happen with one of our cats, and I'm just like, this isn't sense that I can't handle keeping, but you know, it's so hard.
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So I can imagine, yeah.
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Yeah, and that dog, he he'd lived a good life, he'd been through a thing or two as well.
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They are our family.
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We make pets our family, and we would never not do what we're doing for them.
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But um, we still go through that part of the grief process.
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So for you with your most recent loss, how has it been having the other dog still?
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Is that a good support for you, or does that almost make it harder in some ways?
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No, it's in some ways, yes, because I'll have these moments where, you know, because they did funny things together.
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And so I would, you know what I mean, because it's kind of like a routine, right?
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And you kind of expect and you're like, oh, but he's gone.
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You know what I mean?
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And so you have I have a lot of those moments.
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But it's interesting how with both pairs of dogs, how when the first one died, the second, the remaining dog changes.
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They change, they're sad for a little while and they're looking for their friend.
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But then in my in our case, the survivor, I guess, for lack of a better term, um, is more becomes more affectionate.
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They become more cuddly.
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They were in your ride or die before, but they were really like, you know what I mean?
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Because I think they don't have the competition anymore.
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We're not gonna cause shenanigans now.
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We're just like, here, pay attention to me.
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You know, that is so true because things adjust, but in some ways it's nice because you get to maybe even see a little bit different side of their personality, too.
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Yeah, and I thought that was really interesting because I saw a side of Finnegan that I didn't really see.
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Maybe I noticed a little bit when we first adopted him, but he he morphed into a different dog, and he's just he was always sweet, but he does these really super cute kind of different things.
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And he's very snuggly.
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He wants to just get up there and snuggle and so that's his nice.
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Well, and I one thing that I've actually learned too is that the animals also sense when we're going through things, right?
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Yeah, they can tell when we don't feel well or something's off.
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When I lost one of my first cats and I brought his remains home, and I kind of sat it on the bed, and I didn't expect to have this overwhelming emotion as I, you know, took out and the paw print, and my other cat came up and like rubbed on the box, and then that broke me even more.
00:17:53.359 --> 00:17:57.839
But it's like it's that connection we have that is why we love them.
00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:02.079
But it's also so interesting when we see the response of the other pets.
00:18:03.279 --> 00:18:04.400
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:08.880
I had a job that I just really made me cry.
00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:12.480
And when I had those dogs, yeah.
00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:18.000
So, and that's where the dog actually, I that my friend that had the dog that was that job.
00:18:18.160 --> 00:18:24.079
And it just got to to the point where there was a couple weeks there where I cried every night when I got home.
00:18:24.240 --> 00:18:28.240
And so I was sitting there crying on the like I don't even know what made me cry.
00:18:28.319 --> 00:18:30.079
I'm watching TV, and I just start crying.
00:18:30.160 --> 00:18:34.400
My husband's at work, and Dutch just had this spot behind the couch.
00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:36.880
It was like this little cubby for her.
00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:42.160
And I think that I must have started sniveling, making some sort of noise, and she came around.
00:18:42.319 --> 00:18:45.440
And because I'm allergic, I don't let the dogs lick me.
00:18:45.519 --> 00:18:48.480
And I pet them and I snuggle them, but no licking.
00:18:48.720 --> 00:19:25.279
And so she came up and it was the sweetest thing, and she kind of like looked around the couch and then she moved forward, and then she gently put a paw on my leg because I was laying like this on the couch, and she put her nose up to my face and didn't touch, but came so close, and you know, it was just like it still gets me to this day because it was like she's comforting me because I was just so miserable, and then she kind of just curled up next to me on the couch, and it was just like, gosh, I can really sense things.
00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:28.480
I mean, oftentimes I'll say, I don't know how people exist without a pet.
00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:29.920
Like, how do you function?
00:19:30.079 --> 00:19:31.759
Because I need them in those ways.
00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:39.599
Like, I need the I lay down to watch TV and I want to know you're right here and I can pet you, or I had a cat that would always take one paw and put it on my shoulder.
00:19:39.759 --> 00:19:45.759
Like those are the little things that make it all why we why we do this, and while they're family, also, right?
00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:50.960
They're such a part of our all of our experiences, good and bad.
00:19:52.240 --> 00:19:55.680
So, for you as a writer, we haven't talked about that.
